1. Technical Field
The disclosed embodiments are related to publishing articles and more particularly to suggesting headlines to editors in order to improve an article's popularity.
2. Background
The popularity of news articles depends partly on the quality of their headlines. Many tabloids, in particular, excel in such task. In recent years a fast decline in print readership, coupled with spectacular growth in on-line news consumption have created new challenges for the traditional journalism establishment. This ranges from new types of journalism, to new distribution methods and sources, to the need to create new business models. As a consequence, journalism is experiencing an unprecedented change and significant competition, particularly on-line.
As news sources have multiplied, so have the number of articles that describe the same news event. This is readily visible as searching for any news worthy topic on any given day is likely to yield thousands of results. At the same time, the rise of online social media has brought several changes in the news business. First, the pace at which news is produced and consumed has significantly increased. For example, as soon as a newsworthy event occurs, news about the event are produced, shared, and read worldwide in multiple devices and forums. Second, the number of articles a user is exposed to on a daily basis has increased significantly. Users can visit multiple news media sites, and each site can potentially host a nearly unlimited number of articles.
The increase in both news production and changes in user behavior have generated significant competition for users' attention, in a type of marketplace where different headlines “compete” for a user's click (both within a particular page and across social media). In many ways this is not new, and of course, Tabloids, in particular have historically been the masters of grabbing reader's attention with classic headlines such as “Ford to City: Drop Dead” and “Headless Body in Topless Bar” (headline which inspired a movie of the same name) Arguably, the “art of headline writing” is a skill developed by journalists that requires creativity and use of some good ground rules. A good headline summarizes the news article, but entices the reader to want to read more. Guidelines include, for example, that wording should be specific, with emphasis on active verbs, in future or present tense, etc.
The combination of a surge in online news production and consumption, datasets of user click behavior, and advanced machine learning techniques, presents a singular opportunity for large-scale data-driven analysis of this art, as well as for building predictive models. Good headlines have been historically important in attracting readers, but with online news, the difference between a good and a bad headline for a single article can have important revenue impact, affect the propagation of the story in social media, and result in either growth or decline of readership. Despite the potential and significance of a systematic approach to headlines there has not been much scientific research on this topic and journalists still rely on intuition and hand crafted rules of thumb.
It would be beneficial to develop systems and methods for recommending headlines that are more likely to be clicked through.